In the female entrepreneur community groups that I frequent, talking about competition is a bit of a taboo subject. Instead, the new and improved business mindset is Community (or collaboration) over competition – and I love it!
That might be surprising coming from someone whose strengths finder quiz results included competition as a core strength. But outside of my organized sports days and aside from a heated game of Monopoly, the only person I’m competing with these days is myself.
But back to business…
Most people I talk to believe wholeheartedly that community over competition is the way to go. Where I find people struggle is the actual living and feeling of it in the day to day. Like when you’ve just had a discovery call, you thought went incredibly, but they decided to go with someone else. Or when you’ve pitched a podcast, heard nothing back and then heard someone with your same niche on there a few weeks later.
That disappointment is real. And no phrase or saying is going to make that any easier.
But I do think that there is a strategy we can use that’ll truly make competition irrelevant. That’ll ensure that anyone on a discovery call with you will only be talking to you because what you do (or how you do it) is so unique. And that even if a podcast featured someone in the same industry as you, you’re still a great interview for them because the angle is completely different.
So if you’re ready to embrace, live and feel community over competition – it’s time to find your blue ocean.
One of my favourite business books is Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim. If you’ve read it, you know how to use a Blue Ocean Strategy Canvas to examine what your competitors are doing (from things like pricing, delivery, packaging – any factors that you can differentiate) to navigate your business to operate from a place of zero competition – where the waters are blue instead of the shark-infested, red waters where everyone is competing with each other.
Here are the main differences between red ocean and blue ocean:
We’re going to modify the Strategy Canvas to create a Content Blue Ocean Strategy Canvas that’ll help you stand out from the crowd using our work from the Style Quiz, What You Want to Be Known For and Content Crushes.
When we create a blue ocean for our business, competition becomes irrelevant. Comp
This is what we’re going to do for your content!
Step 1: Download the Content Blue Ocean PDF
This is where we’ll be creating a cross-comparison of your content crushes and competitors so that your opportunities because visible.
Step 2: Put Down Yourself and Couple of Your Content Crushes
Just a tip – you might want to create a separate version for your content crushes and competitors.
See part one of this series if you want help in coming up with your content crushes.
See part two of this series if you want help determining your content competitors.
See here where I’ve put down a couple of my personal content crushes:
Step 3: Identify and input the ‘differentiation factors’
This can be any area where your content can differ.
Some that I’ve used are:
- Free value
- Consistency
- Distribution
- Downloads
- Multi-format
- Quality visuals
- Entertainment
- Education
- Topic variety
Step 4 – Plot where you think your content crushes/competitors fall, high to low, for each of the factors you’ve chosen
Don’t worry – no one will this (unless you’re like me and put it in a blog post)!
See below where I’ve put down my perceptions of my biggest content crushes:
Step 5 – Then Look for Your Opportunities
Where are your points of differentiation and similarity within these factors?
Where’s your opportunity to stand out (content-wise)?
Plot yourself now on the Content Blue Ocean strategy canvas.
Step 6 – Create Your Now-Aspire-Never List
Finally – there were probably things that you observed in the Blue Ocean Content Strategy map that you either want to start implementing right away (add these to your ‘now’ list), things you’ll want to implement in the future (add to your aspire list) and finally things that are not a priority and you won’t be focusing on (add these to your never list)
Download your strategy canvas and get started creating your content blue ocean now!
